Second war patrol U-201

[Markus Witt]

I’ve just completed the second war patrol with U-201 in my dead is dead career. After arriving in St. Nazaire on the 12th of May 1941 from her first war patrol U-201 spends a few weeks in port for routine shipyard duties and leave period for the crew. During this time she spends some time in drydock to replace a leaking shaft seal. On the 6th of June she is ready to set sail for her second war patrol. She will return to patrol the North Atlantic convoy routes.

During the patrol I kept a war diary in the style of the real KTB outside of the game. I also kept a chart outside the game to plot my progress. I did this by recording all relevant data in the in-game journal and saving it after each playing session. I would normally play from noon-to-noon and save the game after 1 or 2 days. After saving I then copy-pasted the chart and saved it by alt-tabbing out of the game so that I could then update the progress in a copy of a KM gridmap. After that I also copy-pasted the relevant journal pages so that I could then update patrol log and chart outside the game. Whenever I attack a vessel or a convoy I also create an attack plot.

My playing style is 100% “realism” without any map updates. By that I mean a completely empty map, so own position is not shown on the map. That means I basically navigate by dead reckoning. I only occasionally use celestial navigation (done by the navigation officer), only during twilight and if the weather is good. (Since the map updates are disabled no position mark appears after requesting a fix, but there is still the small dark circle. I have set this circle to stay visible for 5 minutes so I have time to record my position.) I have set the max error for celestial fixes to 12000m, about 6.5 nM, which I think is reasonable.

If I haven’t had a position update for some time I role a dice. Good weather requires a 6 for a fix, perfect weather a 5 or a 6. This way you sometimes have no position update for a week and you depend on your own dead reckoning. This sounds more complicated than it is since dead reckoning in this game is highly simplified and easy to do. During this patrol that lasted 26+ days I only took 4 celestial fixes and the maximum deviation from my DR position was 23.2 nM. I had no problems locating reported contacts and finding my way back to St. Nazaire.
Dead reckoning by navigation officer I do not use. In the OptionsFileEditorViewer I set the max error% to 99999 to render it useless.

Personal rules:
1. Dead is dead.
2. Small convoy reports are ignored (usually unescorted, not realistic).
3. Recognition manual is not used. Target data acquired by plotting, ausdampfen and estimation.
4. Use mostly G7e torpedoes (more difficult in game as you need to get closer).
5. No submerged attacks during (deep) darkness as periscopes were pretty useless IRL during dark nights.
6. Never stop while submerged, the boat needs speed to maintain trim and depth.
7. No use of periscopes when speed > 3 knots.
In the next few posts I will share the war diary of this patrol with relevant attack plots and maps. Can’t put them directly in the posts so I have to use attachments. Perhaps some of you find it interesting to read through the log.